A Southern Psycho

"Mm. Say that again. I doubt it's a very dangerous place for a big guy like yourself, though. I doubt anyone in his right mind would try to give you a hard time."

"Those that have never did again."

"Oh, I can believe that, Bull. I'll bet a man like you has some interesting tales to tell."

"Could be, but nothing' I can talk about, though."

"Ooh, sounds very hush hush--nothing you can tell me?" She gave him a teasingly pouty smile.

"Well," he said, self importantly, "I could, but, then, I would have to kill you." He laughed.

She chuckled, crossed her legs seductively.

He took another drink. Yawned.

"Oh, now, am I boring you?" Cute hurt look.

"No way. It's just been a long day." He yawned again. Stood up. "I'll be back." He went to the bathroom. When he didn't come out, she looked in. He was sitting slumped over on the toilet, his pants around his ankles. She went to her room and took a flat metal case, the size of a wallet, from her purse and a washcloth off the towel rack. He was still passed out when she came back.

She opened the case and pressed his fingers, one at a time, against the ink pad inside, then against a slip of paper in the lid. When finished, she wetted the washcloth and cleaned off all traces of the ink. She took his wallet out and copied out the information on his driver's license with her pen.

~15~

She threw the washcloth out the window of the Viper as she drove to Roy Knox's home.

"What the hell are you up to, Suzy?" Roy said. He'd been watching a football game stretched out in a plush recliner, a long-neck Bud on the nightstand next to him. His wife, Karen, was in the kitchen cleaning dinner ware. The kids could be heard playing in the Rec room.

"I need to know who these prints belong to, Roy. It may have something to do with why Ben None got sprung."

"And I bet there'd be an interesting story to tell on how you got these prints, hm?"

"Not even R rated."

"And how much shit am I gonna be in if the owner of these prints finds out I'm checking him out without cause?"

"You've got reasonable cause . . . if he's involved with a parolee in something shady."

"Yeah, and what if he's not?"

Page shrugged.

Roy pressed his lips together with wry cynicism. "But more to the point, we may be mixing into something better left unmixed. Somebody very high up on a totem pole wanted this Ben guy out of stir, and they didn't do it just so he could play tiddlywinks."

Page nodded with a quick tilt of her head. "So you run the prints, what's the worst can happen? If this is some secret government operation we'll be informed the prints aren't registered--and that'll be the end of it."

"Uh-uh, they may not like it we're meddling. Could get hairy."

"Wha'dah I have to do, Roy, show tit? You worry too much. It'll be alright."

"Okay, I'll do it, but I have a feeling I'm gonna regret it--and you may have to show more than tit."

§

Bull woke up the next morning feeling like shit. He'd fallen off the toilet and spent the night curled up on the floor in a fetal position.

He staggered back into the bedroom area and stood staring at the two plastic cups. He picked up his cup and peed into it. Carefully, he picked up her cup and placed it back into the paper bag it had come from. "You're not as smart as you think you are, bitch."

~16~

She gripped the head of his cock and pressed it into her cunt. It hurt. Slowly, she lower herself, sighing softly. It filled her, the length of it. She groaned as her cunt touched the base of his belly. She moved the palms of her hands up his wiry sides to the taut rib cage. She leaned closer to him, feeling the rigid cock bend reluctantly inside her. Her hands gripped his hard shoulders, kneading with a firm insistence, then, trembling, moved up the sides of his square-jawed face, locking her fingers in the long, unruly hair. She pressed her lips against his, whispering softly. She didn't move. The slightest quiver and she knew she would come. She held back. She hung on the edge of bliss wanting it to last forever.

He filled her with his come, then left for Bob's Burgers. She took some tissue and shoved it up inside to keep his semen from trickling down her thighs. Naked, she wandered aimlessly about the cabin. She hadn't climaxed and was still hot. She touched her clit and shivered. She clenched her teeth, stroking herself. She stopped suddenly, on the verge of coming and went into the kitchen. She needed something to alter reality. To intensify it in a dreamy way.

Tip toeing, she took a box of kitchen matches from a holder on the window frame and withdrew a joint and a match. She sat cross-legged on the sofa inhaling the acrid smoke, holding it deeply in her lungs, then exhaling. Soon the harsh, sharp edges of reality softened and a cocoon of sensual warmth spread through her. She drifted. Time froze, dragged or skipped oddly. She squatted, took out the tissue and let his come drip into the palm of her hand, licked it up with her pink tongue and swallowed it. She lay down; touched her nipples; pinched them; stroked her firm belly with its peach fuzz--lower, to the soft moist center. She closed her eyes, drifting like a leaf on a slow moving stream; tasting the faint ammonia of his come.

Fingers moved in her. Hands caressed her. Too many?

She opened her eyes slowly, groggily. Ages passed. Eons. She looked up through spider webs of confusion from a deep well. Two faces peered down at her. One black, one white. There was laughter. Black hands circled her delicate ankles. White hands gripped her slender wrists. They lifted her up, carrying her . . . somewhere.

~17~

"Wendell, there's a guy named Ben outside says he knows you," Gus said.

Wendell glanced at Cora Dean who was lying in a lounger, next to him, by the side of the indoor pool. The floor to ceiling windows, beyond her, were steamed over. A faint odor of chlorine permeated the room. Wendell studied her patrician face for a sign of emotion. There wasn't any. Cold, imperturbable beauty. That was Cora Dean.

Wendell's face registered dismay. "Ben None?" he murmured almost to himself.

"He didn't say; said you'd know him."

"Put him in the library, Gus. I'll be there in a minute. And, Gus, pat him down. Make sure he's not packin' or wired. He stood up and slipped out of his trunks and put on a lemon-colored hooded sweatshirt, pants and a pair of flip-flops.

Cora Dean watched him leave. A faint expression of derision formed on her face.

§

Ben was looking at the titles of books that covered one wall. Two other walls held several expensive looking Cubist paintings. The last was all glass that opened upon a view of widely-spaced oak and maple that had shed their damp, colorful leaves on a spacious rolling lawn.

"They're all first editions," Wendell said.

"Do you ever read'm?"

"Good heavens, no. They're too valuable for that." He paused for a moment as Ben turned toward him. "I thought Gus got it wrong when he said you were out here. I can't believe it. How the hell did you get out?"

"Prayer."

"Well, it good to see yuh, Ben." Wendell moved toward his mahogany desk, flipped open a cigar box and took one out. "Want one?"

"Naw, I'll stick to cigarettes."

"Now that you're out, got any plans?"

"Thought, maybe, I could invest some money in your operation."

Wendell chuckled, but his eyes were humorless, speculative. "Like a shareholder, huh? Ah, not a bad idea," he said, but without conviction. "How much you have in mind?" He sighed, faintly dismissive.

"I've still got about seventy thousand from that bank job we pulled."

"Oh, yeah. The bank job," Wendell said, airily. "That was the start of the whole thing, wasn't it? You were the brains. You orchestrated all of it. I wouldn't be where I am now if you hadn't." He lit the cigar with a silver lighter and took several puffs. "But that's all water over the dam, now. Back then seventy thou seemed like a lot of money, but, hell, Ben, I've got cars, now, that are each worth four times that much."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that would be the way it is when I drove up and saw the size of your layout. You've come a long way."

Wendell nodded, his eyes cold. "You could have, too, but you had to go blow it by getting drunk and killin' those punks in a senseless bar fight. For a smart guy you're not too smart; you're a loose cannon and you'll never have anything."

"Uhh, I guess I'd better be going before I wear out my welcome, then."

"Ben?" It was a woman's voice.

"Well, this is awkward," Wendell said, sarcastically.

"Cora," Ben said. She had come to the library door wearing a green iridescent robe. He turned to Wendell. "I see you took everything."

"To the victor blah, blah, blah."

Cora stood back as Ben strode past her.

~18~

"Well it's Saturday night and I just wanna get laid." Page sang, raucously and erratically, as she stepped into the shower. "I'm a fool about my money, don't try to save." She took a sip of burbon from a crystal tunbler, wiggling her hips and doing a little fifties dance step as she soaped her breasts and belly. "I'm gonna rock it up . . . whoo, whoo, whoo . . . And ball tonight. Yup, yup yup--yeow!" She sat her glass in the soap niche and raised her fists in front of her face, rolling them over each other while hunching her hips back and forth.

It wasn't Saturday night, though; it was Friday night. But she was feeling fine. She had the whole weekend to herself. And she was gonna get seriously wild. She dried herself off with a towel and put on a black minidress.

As she drove out of Kullhorn she goosed the Viper up to three digits and popped one of her happy pills. It only took her about eleven minutes to make the thirty-six miles to the parking lot of Dante's Inferno.

Black lights, strobe lights, mirror balls, glitter; the music loud, thumping; packed dance floor; nude pole dancers.

Dante's Inferno: 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here.'

"Whiskey Sour," Page said, to the bartender--a cuteness with a black thong-back bikini, pasties and a white collar-black bow tie. She took a cigarette from her clutch. A male hand appeared with a lighter. She leaned toward the flame. "Thanks."

§

When Ben got back to the cabin, it had begun to snow. The front door was unlocked; the rooms dark; silence. He clicked a light switch. The electricity was off. He lit a candle. In the loft he stripped, went to the bathroom and filled the tub.

He heard a thumping sound and went out into the hallway. It came from the bedroom. Janet was lying, spread-eagled, on the double bed, naked. Her wrists and ankles had been tied to the corners of the bed. Duct tape was wrapped around her head and over her mouth.

On her belly words had been printed in red lipstick: FIND THE MONEY OR NEXT TIME WE WON'T STOP WITH JUST TYING HER UP

Ben went to the kitchen and came back with a carving knife. When he had cut her loose and removed the gag, he carried her into the bathroom and set her in the tub, then climbed in behind her, holding her. She shivered like a whipped puppy and leaned her head back on his shoulder while he scrubbed the words away. When he finished, she gripped his wrists and placed his hands on her breasts.

"What's it all about Uncle Ben?"

"So now I'm your uncle?"

"Yes, if Merle can call you Uncle, then I can, too."

"Doesn't that make me guilty of incest?"

"What difference does that make? I'm jailbait, too, but they can only hang you once."

"Hm."

"What do those men want?"

"They want me to find money someone else has that they want."

"Who are 'they'?"

"I don't know. Black Ops, mercenaries--former Special Forces, Navy Seals--whatever; hired killers working for some government agency, probably the CIA or some corporation like Black Water or KBR."

"Must be a lot of money if the government's behind it."

"Uh-huh."

"But why do they think you can get this money?"

He told her about Wendell. "We were partners, once upon a time. We were gonna smuggle drugs into the country from Columbia for the CIA. They use money from drugs to fund covert operations: suppressing or fomenting insurrections or supporting dictators favorable to the American government. But I got sidetracked for ten years. And from the looks of it, Wendell went on to make quite a bundle. Now the CIA, or whoever, wants the money he's made. Either he's been cheating them or he's no longer useful to them. But they don't know where the money is, and they think, because we used to be partners, that I could know where it might be or that I'll be able to find out."

"Will you?"

"I have a strong incentive."

~19~

"It's Quantico, Bull," Al said. He was on his cell phone, his feet propped up on the table in Bull's motel room. Eddie was across from him playing solitare, a cigarette dangling from his purple lips. Bull, lying on a twin bed, clicked the remote, muting the ball game he was watching. "The lab says your piss test was positive for cock smack, heh heh. The cunt doped you, alright."

"Yep, figured it. They get any prints off the cup?"

"Yeah, said they only got one fuzzy thumb print, though. But there was enough points of identication to come up with a possible, a parole officer named Susan Swain Page located in this area; it's not a hundred percent, though." Al gave him a desription.

"It's her," Bull said, sighing cynically. "Get an address."

~20~

A grey Mercedes passed them on the dirt road going to the cabin as Ben drove Janet to school. Cora Dean was waiting inside when he got back.

"You should lock your door," she said, leaned back in the recliner.

Ben sloughed off his overcoat and tossed it over the newel post. "Wouldn't do any good," he said, lighting a cigarette. "My parole officer would just break it down."

She was wearing a black mini dress with a mandarin collar. Spiked heeled ankle boots. A leather coat lay neatly folded on the coffee table.

"You hate me, don't you? I don't blame you."

Ben sat down on the sofa, crossed his legs and stretched an arm along the top of the sofa back. "No. You did what you had to."

She nodded, wistfully. "You were supposed to be in for life. What else could I do?"

"Nothing."

"You know I love you."

Ben inhaled on the cigarette and slowly blew out a stream of smoke. "Did Wendell send you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He wants me to find out what you're going to do. How you managed to get out of prison. Why."

"Uh huh. And what are you willing to do, for him, to find out?"

"I don't give a damn about Wendell, Ben, or what he wants. But for you I've always been willing to do anything--anything, damn you, and you know it. We're two of a kind; there's no other one for me but you."

Ben gave her a long look, then sighed. "They got me out of prison to find out where Wendell hides his assets."

"Who?"

"The government, the CIA, someone high up."

"I know he doesn't keep anything in banks. He's too paranoid to trust them--or anyone."

"In the house somewhere?"

"She shook her head. "No. I happened to walk in on him one day in his bedroom. There was a huge pile of money on the bed--millions of dollars. Later, I saw him drive off in his SUV. The money was gone. Two hours later he was back . . . He has a landing strip, farther back of the mansion, where planes fly in drugs which his men unload, then, in a few days, buyers will arrive in planes or by cars to pick up a shipment for a pile of cash. Everytime this happens he leaves in his SUV, returning a few hours later."

"You never tried to follow him?"

"No. He would have killed me if he'd ever caught me spying on him. And, why should I? He gave me everything I needed--as far as material things were concerned."

"H'm. I need you to call me the next time a shipment arrives."

She looked crestfallen. "You want me to go back to him?"

"You don't have to, but unless I find the money he's hiding, I'll go back to prison, and a girl named Janet will be killed."

"Was that the cutie I saw you with?"

"Yes."

"I don't care about her . . . but I'll do it for you." She paused, started to say something, hesitated, then spoke, her tone resentful. "Are you fucking her?" Then she shook her head, laughing. "Of course you're fucking her. You'd be a damn fool if you weren't."

She, paused, lit a cigarette, giving him a thoughtful look. "There's something you need to know about Wendell, why he was rude to you. He set you up. He hired those three punks to kill you. You and he had put up a lot of money to buy drugs from Columbia. When he saw how profitable it was going to be, greed got the better of him. He had your connections. He no longer needed you. He was scare when you suddenly showed up after ten years, afraid you knew he'd set you up or would find out. At heart he's a coward."

"How do you know he set me up?"

"He likes to brag about it. He's always hated you for being smarter than he is. His massive ego couldn't take it. Getting the better of you made him feel superior. He doesn't understand concepts like loyalty or friendship. He thinks those things are weaknesses." She stopped for a moment as if considering something. "I know you, Ben, and I know you'll kill him, and he deserves it, but you have to find out where he hides the money first. I don't want the government sending you back to prison. Once you find the money, we can skip out, go anywhere on earth we want to. And to hell with all of them."

~21~

"Call me Al."

"Suzy's what my friends call me."

"What's your poison, Suzy?"

"Whiskey Sour."

"My treat." He turned to the cutie bartender. "Two Whiskey Sours." She gave him come-hither look that wasn't faked, for he was a blond-headed hunk with a movie-star face. He gave her a toothy grin and turned back to Page. "You come here often?"

"Often, I'm a drunk."

He chuckled. "A mighty pretty drunk, too."

"I haven't ever seen you here, and I'm sure I would . . . remember . . . if I had." She let her eyes rove over his hard body, the narrow hips and broad shoulders--fitted jeans, sports jacket, shirt opened two buttons down, gold chain around the muscular neck. A nice bulge in his crotch made her feel giddy.

He sat down on the stool next to her and lightly traced invisible patterns with his fingers on her exposed thigh beneath the hem of the yellow minidress. Normally she wouldn't have tolerated such a bold gesture, but this was nice, exciting.

"Wanna dance?"

She held her clutch out to the cutie. "Hold this for me." She took a healthy sip of her Sour. Al slipped a hundred to the cutie, then led her onto the packed dance floor of hot, sex-filled yearnings; young hungry flesh bumping and grinding; hips thrusting against hips; hard bodies undulating like a sea swell of lust.

He held her close, hands squeezing her buttocks. Other dancers jostled them, pressing them tightly together. The heat of bodies; the flashing lights; the glitter; the swirling mass--made her woosy. She stumbled. He held her up. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Slip, slip--slipping away; swirling down. She staggered drunkenly. She couldn't remember which foot came next. She was being walked, half carried to an exit. She felt one of her heels drop off.

"Can't handle her liquor," a voice said.

She was in the parking lot. The air cold. Everything dream like. She saw faces passing, unfocused, leering at her. A car door opened. Phase out.

Someone--Al?--shoved her onto a bed, face up. A hand removed her remaining heel; slowly, pushed her dress up and pulled her panties down. Other hands--?--set her up, pulling her dress over her head, then unhooked her bra leaving her naked.

She found it difficult to focus her eyes. She peered up at the ceiling as if through a film of Vaseline. Her head dropped to the side. A naked man was standing next to her. Farther back, was the silhouette of another naked man standing backlighted in a doorway. She tried to move, but it required too much effort. Her arms and legs flopped about uselessly.